Crescent City Classic boasts deep fields in all divisions

If Saturday’s The Times-Picayune Crescent City Classic were a basketball tournament, the field would resemble March Madness. There are champions in every bracket.

The Men’s Open boasts Solomon Deksisa, winner of the 2012 Cooper River Bridge Run and runner-up in the Bolder Boulder, as well as Alan Kiprono, who last month set the record in the 10-mile Cherry Blossom in 45 minutes, 20 seconds.

The Women’s Open features Teyba Erkesso, the 2010 Boston Marathon champion and the 2007 CCC winner, as well as two of the most accomplished local female racers — Rachel Booth, winner of the Disney Half-Marathon, and Sarah Skotty, second in the Rock ‘n’ Roll New Orleans Half-Marathon.

And the Masters division is headlined by Russian Viacheslav Shabunin, a three-time Olympic miler with a 3:49 best, and the athlete who was undefeated in masters events last year.

So when Andrew Lilly, elite athlete coordinator for the CCC 10K, isn’t just bragging when he says, “This may be one of our deepest fields ever.”

Casual road race fans might have expected the 2012 field to be thin because the Boston Marathon is the next weekend and the summer Olympic Games might be drawing athletes to the track. Not so, Lilly said. There is much more money for world-class runners on the road race circuit than staying on the track for a once-every-four-year shot at a medal.

“The Olympics don’t usually impact this race, because once these athletes are out there on the road, they quickly become concerned with making money,” Lilly said.

“Once in a while you get an athlete who might be invited to a selection race for their country’s team. But most of these people have made the decision to make a living year-round running on the road, rather than waiting for the hope of winning one or two races and being selected for the Olympics.”

The CCC’s biggest competition for elite road runners comes from the World Cross Country Championship, run every two years, usually in the spring.

“That’s the biggest event in the world for these athletes, and making their country’s team for that is the highest honor,” Lilly said.

A starting spot in the Boston Marathon typically isn’t an issue for the CCC’s invited runners, either.

“(Marathons) have become so specialized that someone training for Boston, this particular race is so fast, it wouldn’t make much sense to come here, unless you were just going to run a (training) 10K that day, anyway,” Lilly said.

In fact, the CCC normally draws one of the best elite fields of any 10K road race. The Association of Road Race Statisticians (www.arrs.net) ranks the CCC second in the world in the quality performances over its history, second only to Atlanta’s Peachtree Classic. The ranking is derived by giving points for each finish under different time benchmarks starting with 30 minutes for the 10K distance. The Classic’s second-place standing is more impressive when considering Peachtree draws 55,000 runners compared to the CCC’s 20,000, and the Atlanta race, run on July 4, offers $110,000 in total prize money with the winners getting $15,000, while the Classic’s totals are $37,500 and $5,000.

“When you consider we still actually have more times under 28 than they do, you get an idea of the depth of quality we often have here,” Lilly said.

It’s that history of low times that helps attract so many quality athletes to the Classic. Road runners know the flat New Orleans layout is one of the fastest courses in the world, a great venue to improve their rèsumès. According to arrs.net, sub 27:40 has been run only 44 times in the 10 top-ranked 10K road races, and 10 of those have come at the Crescent City Classic.

And Lilly thinks this year’s deep field could see a winning time around 28 flat, especially if the forecast of starting time temperatures in the mid-60s with light humidity proves true.

Kiprono might be considered a favorite after his blistering 45:20 record in the Cherry Blossom 10-miler. If he repeats that pace Saturday, he could easily break 28 minutes before reaching the City Park finish line.

But Lilly sees him getting a healthy challenge from Deksisa, as well as fellow Africans Mengistu Nebsi, Shadrack Koskei and Linus Chumba.

“It should be extremely competitive in both the men’s and women’s races, not just because these are really great athletes but because none of them were happy with their times in last weekend’s races,” Lilly said. “It’s a deep field.”